Spiritland

by Nava Renek

Fiction. SPIRITLAND follows the journey of Maddy Foster as she travels through the fringe world of backpackers, drug dealers, Vietnam Vets, and other ex-pats living in Thailand. During Maddy's first... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1881471578
• ISBN13: 9781881471578
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Spuyten Duyvil
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

The real "Beach"

Having been a frequent visitor to LOS ("land of smiles" AKA Thailand) since my first trip in 1994, I find the premise to be highly believable. While I admittedly have little in common with the Khao San Road backpacker set, I have borne witness to the often vacant eyed legions trudging up and down Sukumvit Road and even have an acquaintance or two that came very near to going over the edge.Where Alex Garland's "The Beach" is fantasy, Nava Renek's "Spiritland" is reality. Starting the day at 3PM with a "joint" and a Singha, staying up all night getting trashed while watching bootleg videos on outdoor TV's and repeating the cycle. No worries. When the money runs out it is easy to believe that a person will do anything to avoid the "jumbo" home.I really liked everything about this book and found the believability factor to be quite high with the possible exception of the "gorgeous" French girl working in the Thai owned go-go bar in Chiang Mai. While it is known that there are Caucasian women (mostly from the former Soviet Union) that ply their trade in Thailand, I have yet to hear of any that actually danced at a go-go.I am quite a fan of the genre (Asian theme fiction) and read Spiritland in two sittings. I only hope that author continues along the line.

Midnight Express Through a Thai Nightmare

Renek guides her readers through Spiritland with the sure touch of an experienced author. Maddy Foster is an unremarkable American girl who leaves her safe existence to embark on a nightmarish existential quest. In this circumnavigation of self, Maddy loses her way in the horror of a Thailand that is choking in the death-grip of an invasion by the farangs from Europe and America. It is a crumbling world she traverses, in which individuals struggle to find, or to cling to, the broken remnants of the human spirit. While the desperate souls drowning in the morass fatalistically accept the 'bad luck' that is their fate, Maddy discovers solace in a secret forest shrine in which an overgrown Buddha persistently pushes its 'spiraling stone headdress above all the jungle debris'. One surprising day, she finds that it has been cleaned and decorated with a garland of fresh flowers, by an unseen hand. The plot is tight, with all the drama, suspense, and excitement of a John Irving novel. The writing is clear, yet Renek writes with an evocative ability usually reserved for poetry. Maddy is swept along a chain of events that gains a certain inevitability as death picks off the strangers, friends, and lovers who circle around her, and as she herself totters on the brink of destruction. Will she find the inner strength that she needs to survive? Renek's original travel story has the inner power to blow you away- read it to expand your horizons, read it to be entertained, read it to be challenged. You will be the richer for the experience.

Spirited Away

Spiritland is an accessible, thoughtful and moving account of a young American woman's journey through the darker regions of Thailand. The narrator is impressionable, to say the least, yet she cares deeply for the people around her. She befriends a Westerner in a Thai prison, a French dancer in an exotic nightclub, and a runaway from San Francisco who has fallen into the drug-running life. These experiences build to a critical point, as the main character, Maddy, realizes that her situation is beyond her control. But her hardship is tempered. The author's talent and clarity of expression guide the reader through to the surprising resolution.

Not the Thailand You Read about in the Travel Section

Horror stories abound with cruelties and absurdities that are no match for the chilling revelation of a clear eye. A reasder could be any one of the characters as naturally created as your face in the mirror. With props kicked away, the story is told through the action of men an dwomen running away to get more out of life and nourish their spirit only to fall into frightening false illusions that destroy them. Thailand as you've never seen in travelogues or CNN becomes the prison closing in on them an dmaking money off heir idealistic searchings. In Spritland, a dramatically unfolding title, a generation is as indelibly marked as the cherry orchard owners. Only this generation is ongoing an dshowing what we re doing to each other in the extravaganza. The novelist Arthur Nesesian hit it on the nose when he wrote, "Spiritland moves with all the intensity and subtlety of an Asian tiger -- it is at once both beautiful and powerful. The protagonist, Maddy Fosters wavers in a mdern day purgatory between the ancient and the addicted, ancestrual spirits and the spiritually lost. Her exquisite descent into hell is recorded with such poetic realism it reads as if Dante himself had updated Let's Go Thailand 2002."

Spiritland - A story of the dark side of backpacker travel

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you gave up your job, school, your apartment, your belongings, and bought one of those cheap airplane tickets to India or Thailand? This novel lays it out for you in vivid imagery and straightforward old fashion storytelling. The main character, Maddy Foster, makes that brave move-gives up everything--but finds herself adrift in Thailand with nothing to hold on to or believe in. Soon after arriving, Maddy becomes obsessed by a notice on a traveler's bulletin board where parents are searching for an American girl just like herself. In order to fill her void and give meaning to her trip, Maddy embarks on an informal search for this lost girl, while simultaneously letting her own life fall into some kind of private hell. Along the way, Maddy gets caught up with Western drug dealers, Vietnam Vets, prostitutes, and other ex-pats who have chosen to give up their relatively comfortable lives in the first world to establish lives dictated by fate, risk, and chance in a foreign country. In the end, Maddy's redemption comes from the fact that she's kept a diary and through the diary she can recreate the story that becomes the novel.This novel's a page turner, full of lots of details about backpacker culture and the Thai's attitude about turning their country over to tourism. Sit down to read Spiritland when you have a few hours to give over to an enchanting and frightening trip to Southeast Asia.